The background
As we've seen, too many babies being born is one of the biggest causes of suffering in nature. One way to reduce this would be to lower the number of births, for example with methods that prevent reproduction.
The objection
"Sterilizing an animal against its will violates its rights, like the right to reproduce and the right to keep its body intact."
Three answers
1. There are many ways to help without sterilizing. Vaccinating, treating diseases, giving water, food, and shelter, rescuing animals in disasters. None of that involves sterilization. So the objection doesn't work against most of the proposal.
2. Respecting a right that makes things worse? Some people think we shouldn't respect a right when doing so leads to a situation much worse than not respecting it. If not reducing births means millions of babies will be born only to die suffering, that's an extremely high price.
3. Which rights are at stake? The author also asks whether it makes sense to talk about a right to reproduce for animals that have no plans to have babies, and whether that right would count more than the babies' right not to be born just to suffer.
In short
- Reducing births could greatly reduce suffering.
- Most kinds of help don't even involve sterilization.
- Respecting a right that causes much more suffering is hard to justify.